Former secret service agent on ruse to smuggle Trump out of Turkey

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0:23My primary concern here is what presents a bigger threat moving forward.

0:29Paul Eckloff:The president successfully leaving a war zone or releasing that trade draft to the public and endangering every operation moving forward.

0:38Tom Cl...:The president starred in his own covert operation last month when he was reportedly smuggled onto a secret flight to dodge an assassination threat.

0:57Tom Cl...:It's Tuesday, August 11th, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Kalyani Saxena. Today on the show, we'll hear about some major changes the Trump administration is making to its childhood vaccine recommendations.

1:15Paul Eckloff:Effective immediately, my administration is recognizing gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations for only 11 core vaccinations against the most serious and dangerous diseases, along with the MMR, which hopefully will be split up.

1:30Tom Cl...:Also, people who lost everything in the Spokane, Washington wildfires are stocking up a makeshift general store for firefighters working on the ground. We speak with a deputy fire chief from Southern California who is helping with the emergency response there.

1:46Paul Eckloff:The community is providing to us, and it's an amazing demonstration of hope.

1:55Tom Cl...:But first, President Donald Trump left a NATO summit in Turkey last month via a catering truck. No, that's not the plot of a new spy novel. The Washington Post reports that's actually what happened after the president became the subject of an Iranian assassination threat. As of this taping, NPR had not yet independently confirmed the story. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut says he wants an investigation into what the Secret Service did, calling the incident, quote, downright scary. Here's what we know from The Washington Post. The administration said that Trump left Turkey on July 8th on board Air Force One, using the original Air Force One and not the plane gifted to him by Qatar.

2:41Tom Cl...:Already on the plane were media and some White House staff. Trump boarded the plane in front of TV cameras. Then he was smuggled out in an airport catering truck and onto a smaller plane that flew him to Britain. So for hours, basically, the American public and many officials had no idea where the president really was. Whew, lots to unpack there. Thankfully, we've got Paul Ekhoff on deck. He frequently traveled with Presidents Obama and Trump as a supervisor of the Presidential Protective Division of the Secret Service. And he spoke with Scott Tong about this operation. The Washington Post initially reported on this elaborate deception that the president boarded the old Air Force One.

3:28Tom Cl...:And that turned out to be a decoy because the Post's sources say he stepped off the plane then onto a catering truck, which took him to a different plane. This was because of what the Post calls an Iranian assassination threat. What do you make of this apparent misdirection? Are you surprised?

3:45Paul Eckloff:I'm not surprised. And my first response would be, why is this being leaked publicly? What are the motivations of somebody who would reveal this sort of tradecraft? I wouldn't say it's an elaborate ruse. This is the most basic of ruses, a basic shell game of you don't know which limo the president is in. You don't necessarily know what elevator, what room in a building he's in. His schedule is often very, very public. His specific movements, especially in and out of war zones, has historically been clandestine. clandestine.

4:17Tom Cl...:I wish I wouldn't ask you about, Paul. But first of all, if you were still in your old Secret Service job, would you have been in the middle of this, assessing the threat, figuring out the best way to protect the president?

4:28Paul Eckloff:Yes, I would have been on the EA team, as we call it, the emergency action team that would have made this decision. When you consider that Turkey sits in the center of two current wars, its southern border is Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and its northern border is the Black Sea with the Russian Black Sea fleet and just to the north of that, Ukraine. You have to understand that a NATO summit in the middle of two war zones would necessitate very creative thinking.

4:54Tom Cl...:Now, as that was happening reportedly, on board Air Force One were White House staffers, journalists who had been told the president was on board. So in this kind of decoy moment, did that put them in harm's way?

5:09Paul Eckloff:When the president travels internationally, he travels with at least two aircraft. And the men and women on board, whether it's the Secret Service or even the press corps, knows that they enter sort of a different security environment. As to whether it endangered those on board, the entire trip endangers everyone on board. So my primary concern here is what presents a bigger threat moving forward, the president successfully leaving a war zone or releasing that tradecraft to the public and endangering every operation moving forward.

5:41Tom Cl...:Yeah, this is why, you know, folks in your line of business talk so much about sources and methods. You reveal them, they get torn out of the playbook, as it were, by necessity.

5:50Paul Eckloff:Well, not necessarily. It's interesting because the president was seen boarding Air Force One and then was seen deplaning Air Force One in UK. All of the rest is speculation and reporting by outlets. Was all of this elaborate tradecraft, was it a psyop used to make people question which aircraft he was on and thus ensure his safety?

6:11Tom Cl...:Oh, so just to pause you there, Paul, are you suggesting that – I mean one thing that could be happening is that people are telling the journalists that this happened and that's the misdirection.

6:22Paul Eckloff:Well, it's possible that those people were told a number of things. I'm not saying whether this occurred or not. I have no special knowledge. Okay. I'm merely positing that maybe it didn't and a certain group was told that he did one thing. Another group was told he did another.

6:37Tom Cl...:Yeah.

6:38Paul Eckloff:This has occurred even to my knowledge back to President Lincoln arriving to D.C. for his inaugural. Which train was he on? He swapped trains to avoid an assassination attempt. President Clinton, as has been reported, didn't fly an Air Force One into Pakistan.

6:53Tom Cl...:Right, right. He went in on a decoy plane, right? Air Force One landed, but President Clinton stepped off this plain white jet for presumably the same kind of security reasons.

7:02Paul Eckloff:And there is always a threat with what you do. Revealing tradecraft is the biggest threat that this entire story, the plot that is being missed by the press. We are hearing from congressional people that want to be briefed on the threat. Absolutely, they deserve to be briefed. But why is there no intellectual curiosity or outrage that it was leaked to start with? I haven't heard that anywhere. I've even heard accusations that the Secret Service leaked it. Who is put in danger more every day by an increase in vitriol and political violence in the United States. It's my former friends and colleagues in the Secret Service and those who put their lives and bodies on the line between danger and democracy to keep the president safe and the peaceful transfer of power.

7:44Paul Eckloff:They have the least to gain from revealing tradecraft. But sometimes the ability to conduct a ruse is the best ruse itself, even within the Secret Service during some of these clandestine operations in and out of war zones. Not everyone on the president's detail knows where he is or what he's doing. Only those that need to know to affect the security of that operation. I once guarded overnight Camp David with no president in it.

8:10Tom Cl...:Paul, briefly, this flight the president took to leave Turkey drew a lot of attention back in July because the president reportedly switched from this newer plane given by Qatar to the old Air Force One plane, which was considered more secure, reportedly. In this case, But with regard to what we're talking about, did it matter which Air Force One the president boarded in this apparent decoy operation?

8:33Paul Eckloff:That's hard to say without revealing or even knowing what the specific countermeasures are on each aircraft. In this case, the aircraft that's being reported is a military aircraft, a 32A, which is a 757 often used by the vice president. But the president himself has also flown on this aircraft in the past.

8:53Tom Cl...:Paul Ekloff is a retired member of the Secret Service's Presidential Protective Division. He frequently traveled with Presidents Trump and Obama. Paul, thanks very much for the time. Thanks for having me.

9:13Tom Cl...:Coming up next, there's new and confusing public health guidance from the Trump administration as measles cases hit a 35-year high. Yesterday, the president signed an executive order that cuts the number of vaccines the government recommends for children and calls for breaking up a single vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella into separate shots. Doctors, including a Republican U.S. senator, are pushing back. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana took to social media to call the executive order, quote, wrong, saying, quote, the president does not have the expertise to make these changes. After the break, Indira Lakshmanan speaks with Dr.

9:55Tom Cl...:Erin Millstone from the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. Stick around.

10:13Dr. Aaron Milstone:So in the last three decades, high compliance with routine childhood vaccines has prevented more than one million deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Many diseases such as measles had been all but eliminated. Now measles is on the rise as kids are heading back to school. what is the risk to general public health if children stop getting vaccines?

10:37Tom Cl...:Exactly what you just said, that we are going to see more children in the United States die of vaccine-preventable diseases. We have a vaccine, the MMR vaccine, mesos, mumps, rubella, that we know is safe. It's been used, as you said, for decades, and we know it's highly effective. And what we're seeing now in the United States and other places is that vaccine is less frequently used, more people will get measles. And like we saw, I remember two healthy children in the U.S. died this year from measles virus. And there are many of us who are hoping that we can reassure parents that these vaccines are safe and the best thing they can do is vaccinate their children to protect them against these preventable diseases.

11:18Dr. Aaron Milstone:Well, I want to get back to how to speak to parents. But before that, let's talk about the nuts and bolts of the president's order. He's recommending the MMR vaccine be separated into three, but individual shots don't currently exist in the U.S. as an option. So explain why were the shots bundled and what's the risk of separating them? Right.

11:38Tom Cl...:So I think you mentioned something important, that there are no licensed individual vaccines for those components in the United States. Many manufacturers over time have bundled vaccines to make it easier for children. Lots of vaccine science is driven by the timing and the dose of the vaccine. You give as little as possible at the right time to make sure that the child develops the immunity they need to protect themselves for a long time, hopefully lifelong, against those infections. That's why we know that we give measles vaccine at 12 months to hopefully give lifelong protection. And then again, the booster at four or five years.

12:17Tom Cl...:So the recommendation to split the doses at a time when those vaccines don't exist, what that may do or likely will do is lead to confusion. Like you said, parents will be confused. They won't know what to do. And whenever people get confused about something, these are well-intentioned parents who love their children, just like we all love our children. They want to do what's best. And if you're concerned and confused and fearful, the easy thing to do is to say no. So what I'm hoping people do is talk to your pediatricians, talk to the people that know your children and that can give you sound advice about what's best for your child.

12:57Dr. Aaron Milstone:Well, let's get to the why behind this. The Trump administration continues to link vaccines to autism, despite numerous studies that have debunked any cause and effect. That said, more children are being diagnosed with autism than in previous years. So is there something missing in the conversation around autism that pediatricians and health officials should be doing differently?

13:19Tom Cl...:Yeah, I think you emphasize correctly, there have been many, many, many studies showing that there's no association between vaccines and autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. And right now, there's no new science. There's no new data, no new science suggesting anything different. This is just bringing up an old argument with no new data. So we need to reassure parents that vaccines don't cause autism. As Dr. Bhattacharya said yesterday, there is a lot of work that's being happened to better understand autism. We as pediatricians would love to see more resources made available to support families whose children have autism, because that wasn't part of this executive order, because families whose children have autism still have needs.

14:05Tom Cl...:And we would love to see support go in that direction as well. All right.

14:09Dr. Aaron Milstone:Dr. Milstone, you know this as a pediatrician and as a member of the American Academy. Vaccine skeptics, including some parents, say this is a win. They believe they're doing what's best for their kids. There's a lot of distrust of the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry. So what is your advice to fellow doctors? How should they best listen to parents' concerns while at the same time persuading them how best to protect their kids? We have about a minute left.

14:34Tom Cl...:I think what you said is important, which is active listening. Listen to parents' concerns. Reassure them with stories. Most pediatricians have seen kids die of vaccine-preventable diseases. It's tragic. We need parents as advocates coming out and speaking, parents who've unfortunately suffered those losses. I think what you said is pediatricians need to actively listen, don't dismiss, listen, and do their best to help reassure and encourage parents that vaccines are a gift to their kids that will help them become adults.